How Would you Like a Poke In The Eye?

My youngest son has entered the Toastmasters competition at his school here in the SCV. For those of you who may not know what this is here is a brief description; A bunch of elementary school kids write speeches on varying topics and say them to their class. If their class and teacher like the speech then they advance to, in my son's case, saying it before the upper grades. After that if they advance once again they say it before a panel of teachers and the whole school. Next they go to district, then regional and then finally a national competition. It's a pretty cool program for all those up and coming politicians.

Well my youngest decided that he would do his on bullying. You see this has been a rough year for my youngest. He is a big kid and since we have taught him our Christian values he comes off like a gentle giant. He plays with the special needs kids, not cool in elementary school, and just doesn't punk anyone. At one point we contemplated home school because of this. Needless to say the teacher, once we made him aware of what our intentions were, took care of the situation. So when it came time for our son's persuasive speech he decided to do it on "Bullying". I am putting below his speech word for word because.......for one I am very proud of him. It takes a lot of courage to endure what he has endured this year and then to get up in front of those kids who were bullying him and tell them the effects of what they did.....well let's just say it's one of those proud parent moments. Secondly I am posting it here because this is an important topic. These days with the shootings at Northern Illinois University and West Virgina it is a topic that needs to be discussed. For some reason we as parents have either forgotten how to parent or are afraid to. We here in the SCV have kids who bully because of the material things like clothes, iPods, do you look like Tom Brady and stupid stuff like that. It may not be different from where you at so please read it and take it to heart.

Bullying and the effects of being bullied

I am going to talk to you today about bullying and the effects of being bullied. The reason I chose this topic is because I have been bullied and I am just telling you it hurts. Sometimes it hurts you physically and mentally. It can hurt physically because sometimes it beat you up. It hurts mentally because sometimes they just make fun of you. So in talking to you I will explain what bully’s look like, what bullies act like, and why we shouldn't bully.

The dictionary says bullies are a blustering browbeating person, one habitually cruel to others who are weaker.[1] Wikipedia’s definition is Bullying is the act of intentionally causing harm to others through verbal harassment, physical assault, or other more subtle methods of coercion such as manipulation.[2] My definition of Bully’s are people who hurt people by calling them names, and kick them or punch them to feel less confident about themselves. I read an article that said that research shows that most adults who bully act like they have full authority and really want to do damage. Also bullies can be boys or girls. North Dakota State University said this about Bullies, “Bullies put dirt in your face, make fun of you in front of other people, and force you to give up your lunch money to them.”[3] In my experience Bully’s form by trying to get attention by making fun of other children. A lot of times bullies call people names and beat them up just because they want to look cool. KidsHealth.Org says this about bulling, “Sometimes bullies make you do stuff you don’t want to do, like to get off the basketball court.”[4] In my opinion even though bullies think their being cool by doing this stuff they really aren’t cool at all. Sometimes the bullies are being bullied so they take their anger out on other kids.

So now that we have looked at who can be a bully let me tell you what being a bully is. There are two types of bullying, physical, and mental. The physical aspect of bullying is when kids push, hit, or make physical contact with you. The mental aspect of bullying is when kids call you names, make fun of you or mess around with your property. Sometimes bullies make fun of or beat up other kids just because they want attention. Sometimes bullies will pretend to be your friend just so they can make fun of you and look cool to their other friends. Nobully.org says this about bullying “Bullying is when someone keeps doing or saying things to have power over another person.”[5] An example of this is when someone tells you to do something you don’t want to do and if you don’t they will threaten to beat you up. A new type of bullying is called cyber bullying. Cyber bullying is when groups of people get together online to intimidate and threaten another person through the use of Instant messaging, Blogging, text messages, and E-mails. Wikipedia says this about Cyber-Bullying, “In order for it to be cyber-bullying, the intent must be to cause emotional distress, and there must be no legitimate purpose to the communication.”[6] One other type of bullying is called hazing. Hazing is when a group of people embarrass you or humiliate you so that you can join a club or organization.

So now I have told you what a bully looks like, what a bully is and now I am going to tell you why you shouldn't bully. You shouldn’t bully other people because it hurts their feelings and destroys their self confidence. Life after adult bulling.com says “He or she, referring to the bully, wants to be popular so they bully then they make other people less confident.”[7] Destroying peoples self confidence should never be someone’s goal. Most of the time the people who were had their life changed because their feelings were really hurt. We should never want to hurt someone’s feelings and if we do we should apologize. Often times those people who were bullies went on to getting in bigger trouble sometimes resulting in going to jail. Some bullies grow up to be criminals because of the same things they did to kids in school continue to be what they did as an adult. Another reason why you shouldn’t bully is because it causes people to be depressed. Depression comes from constantly being put down day after day. From experience I can tell you this is not what you want to go through every day. I read in an article that a kid even committed suicide because of how mean bullies were to him. In that same article it said that some kids have such mean bullies they hurt themselves.

So in conclusion the reason I have talked to you about bullying is so that all of you will see that you shouldn’t become a bully because it makes the people who are being bullied feel bad about themselves. I hope that by explaining what being a bully is, why you shouldn’t be a bully and the effects of it that you wouldn’t want to bully anyone. I also hope that through this speech I have convinced you that you shouldn’t bully people because everybody is created equal. After all the Declaration of Independence says, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”[8] I believe we all should be happy, don’t you?

Thank you

---

[1] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bully

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullying

[3]www.ad.ndsu.edu\pubs\yf\famsci\fs570w.htm

[4] www.kidshealth.org\kid\feeling\emmotions\bullies.html

[5]www.nobully.org.nz\advicek.htm#one

[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber-bullying

[7] www.lifeafteradultbullying.com/620/index.html

[8] http://www.archives.gov/national-archives-experience/charters/declaration_transcript.html

After reading this please consider the people around you. If you see some people bullying stop them. If you are a parent of a bully, stop them. For you parents out there I just want to encourage you to parent your kids. You are the adult, you are the one setting the rules and you are in control. I'll be honest with you, while my son was being bullied I was not mad at the kid bullying my son, I was mad at the parents for not being parents.

Be Careful, There Might Be Poison in That Water

Over the past few days I've though long and hard about blogging on this subject. I consulted my wife for her opinion and I talked to a friend about it and I decided that I should. The subject I have been thinking about a lot lately has been Christians being followers and not leaders, Christians being pew listeners and not Bereans (Acts 17:11). As I look around the Christian landscape this is most prevalent in the way we view those on that are trying to engage the culture. Let me give a little background on this subject and how I view it. I attended Grace Community Church in Sun Valley (John MacArthur's Church) for about 19 years. This was a great place to hear the Bible taught. To be able to hear on of the most prolific expositors of the Word in one service and then to go to a Sunday school class and hear another very qualified pastor teach again had a profound impact on who I am today as a believer. Over those 19 years I took what Pastor MacArthur and our Sunday school pastors said and searched scripture myself. I purchased commentaries and asked for books for my birthday and Christmas. I was devoted to understanding what it was that these men were so passionate about. At the same time I noticed that there were two other groups of people at Grace, The MacArthurites (people who only attended because Pastor John was there), these people stood out because if John was not in the pulpit church became glorified babysitting for the kids so that they could go to breakfast. The other group I just called Gracites (these people viewed Grace as the Camelot of Christian churches). These people loved Grace Community Church, nothing wrong with that on the exterior, but what you wouldn't see is that if churches did not "do" church the Grace way then they were made fun of and often seen as poor churches........never mind what was being taught from the pulpit. I now attend a church where the pastor, Scott Ardavanis, is the old college pastor from Grace. Placerita Baptist isn't exactly the same in many ways other than the teaching is amazing. So as you ca see I have been blessed by great teaching. The pitfall in this bubble of great teaching is that it is far to easy to become a pew sitter, a not thinking for yourself bible memorizer and a person who calls the views on varying things their own because they are said from the pulpit instead of researching those views before calling them their own. We live in an age where we take for granted that which we are being taught. We are no longer Bereans in our churches.

There is another realm that this is going on in and that is the blogosphere. There are many far more educated men than I putting out information on the internet via blogs that I do not fully understand. It has always been my opinion to never talk about a belief of mine until I fully understand what I believe. A wide seminary professor told me once when we were talking about the rapture of Christians (Pre-mil, Post-mil.....)that he would not tell anyone his views until he fully understood his views. Great advise.....I took this into my Christian walk in many ways for you see in all that great teaching I was getting I did not fully understand what I was being taught. So how does this pertain to the blogs that are out there? Easy we as Christians have the ability to view deep theological articles on the academic arguments that are currently out there. We as Christians can find our favorite theologian on the internet via a website or podcast.....if your lucky you might get a vodcast of them. We as Christians can read blogs from these men and develop beliefs on topics that our parents would have never dreamed of. The problem is this though, the same pew sitter from the church, the same person that I saw at Grace Community that was there solely because of Pastor John are on the internet and are just blindly believing what is being said because of who is saying it. The problem here is that we have a group of Christians out there developing opinions on things such as the post modern church and various pastors based on what these men say and not based on anything they have researched or listened to. Why are we as Christians not being Bereans?

So what is the problem? The problem is when, like this week, men take the style of a preacher and slam him in there blog. When they tell the pew sitters that are reading there blog that the style of a person's preaching is more important than the content of his teaching. It is so easy for us in the "orthodox" camp to through stones at those who are doing ministry in a different way and who are reaching out to those in our culture that we "orthodox" Christians can not reach. I listened to the preacher who I saw slammed this week at a conference, ironically on the subject of Text and Context, and he just drilled the pastors who where listening to him on the importance of the cross. He spoke about how the "post moderns" are harming the cross and that without the cross we lose salvation and redemption. The style was not Pastor MacArthur's, but the context was dead on. So what is the deal with this pastor? Style! The blogosphere is creating a bunch of people that are pretending to be educated on varying theological topics based on an article they read. Why are we not being Bereans?

Here is the challenge. Dare to be a Berean. Dare to challenge what is being taught. Not in a rebellious way, but in a way that educates yourself. The challenge is to be a Berean...."Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so."

Someone Please Call the Fashion Police

OK so the Tour of California is in the in the SCV today which usually presents two problems. The first problem is the fact that the since the race finishes across the street from our apartment all the streets are shut down and you really don't want to leave because you don't know if you'll get back in. Whoever the traffic engineer is for this city should be flogged or at least lose his license as an engineer. The second is that every wanna-be cyclist and real cyclist congregate here. Now the real cyclist have some sweet looking bikes and are usually in shape enough to wear the spandex that cyclists normally wear. The wanna-be's on the other hand though.....that's a different story.

This is what I was greeted with this morning. i just got back from the gym and am feeling good about myself when this greets me. The first though I had is that this should be illegal. You should have carry a card that says that you are in shape enough to wear this type of clothing. Another though I had was what about big guys in other sports.....like.....

football isn't so bad, what about......

Superheroes don't look so super, what about......

race car drivers should probably not be big guys. Anyways I think you are getting the picture. Don't get me wrong I've really got nothing against big people, but everybody should be aware of what they are wearing. Now understand I have a gut and I know how I look in spandex and I am not Jack Black nor am I Chris Farrell so I do not look good in spandex.

Next year the SCV needs to get me to my apartment and have the fashion police out bright and early so I can go eat breakfast not taste last nights dinner a second time.

Christian Idol Pt. 2 (In Conclusion)

When I started my post on idolatry a couple of days ago this is more where I was headed than where I wound up.

In our church our pastor has been taking us through the book of Mark and two Sundays ago he comes to this passage, "Then His mother and His brothers arrived, and standing outside they sent {word} to Him and called Him. A crowd was sitting around Him, and they said to Him, "Behold, Your mother and Your brothers are outside looking for You." Answering them, He said, "Who are My mother and My brothers?" Looking about at those who were sitting around Him, He said, "Behold My mother and My brothers! "For whoever does the will of God, he is My brother and sister and mother." (Mark 3:31-35)

In our culture today, if you are doing something and your mother and father show up, what is our response? We drop everything and run to greet them. In this passage, as my pastor so aptly pointed out, Jesus doesn't do that. Instead He uses is as a lesson in priorities. Now I am going to make it perfectly clear where I stand on this so there is no mis-conception about what I believe regarding my family. I am a steward of what God has blessed me with. My family is part of that stewardship. There is a difference though between them and the other things God has blessed me with, like money, a place to live and a car and that is the fact that they are my first ministry. If I can not minister to them then I should not even try to minister to the church body as a whole. If I do not evangelize my kids then I shouldn't even try it anywhere else. With that I believe that our culture has driven many Christian families to idolize their families. I think that due to the fear of being inundated with sin some Christian families have taken on a bunker mentality.

Families today have taken themselves our of the social mix in the name of "family time". I will give you a couple of examples of what I mean.

Families that miss Sunday night church service because that is family night. Really? Well what do you call Monday through Saturday night? Ignore the family night? Now I don't want to become legalistic about attending the Sunday night service, but I am a person who believes that any time the Word of God is being taught I and my family should be there. I can think of no better family time then to be with my family and my brothers and sisters in Christ and taking hat opportunity to instill in my kids the importance of church.

Another example would be the home school family that uses home school as a way to shield their kids from the world. The last time I checked we are to be "in" the world. If you shield you children from the world then how can they evangelize those in the world? They will only be in contact with believers. Now I do know many families that home school correctly, but often times parents use this avenue of education to protect their kids from the world outside. Now I am not talking about you families that may need to home school due to a bad neighborhood or another extreme and I am not talking about allowing your kids to watch bad Television shows. I am talking about the families that see a good school system, like the one here in the SCV and think that their kids need protecting from it. It is hard to parent a public school kid don't get me wrong, but what an opportunity to talk to my kids about what is going on in our culture and how we can speak into that.

There are also parents who feel that they alone can disciple their kids. In my experiences now as a parent it has been a blessing to have some select few college students in my kids lives. They have been able to talk to my kids when they couldn't exactly talk to me. For you parents who think that's wrong, all I have to say is "Get real". Are telling me that your kids should only see you as a mentor? Are you telling me that a youth pastor or bible study leader could not come along side of you and help?

We as a body of believers need to start acting like just that, a body of believers. Sometimes I think we as Christians try our best to isolate ourselves from the world. We must go forth into this culture and evangelize it and that means not seeing our families as reasons not to be biblical in our walks. Serve others with your family, go to church with your family and fellowship your family and other families. Develop relationships with the unsaved neighbor next door. Allow your children to develop relationships with that unsaved neighbors kids. Be like Christ and train your family to be like Christ. Are your priorities like Christ's? After all He did say that we must "hate our mother and father, brother and sisters" in an effort to show us that He must be preeminent in our lives.

Dude Sings Like a Lady!

OK a friend of mine, Mike Slovek, Twitters about this guy. His name is Nick Pitera and he is scary good in a scary, creepy he shouldn't be able to do that kind of way.

How I Kissed Dating Goodbye, But My Daughter Didn't

My wife and I are entering a new phase in our lives. We actually have a daughter that has started dating. In our family we have taught the kids that for a Christian there is no such thing as casual dating. My wife and I believe that there is only one reason to date and that is for the purpose of getting married. With that said we interviewed, uh I mean, we met with the young man that desires to go out with our daughter yesterday. I blog about this so that those of you who have not gone down this road yet have an idea of how we.....ok, how I handled it.

Suzi and I had talked about what we were going to talk about for the past week since we heard that he wanted to talk to us. At this point I think I have to tell you about the emotional state of Suzi and I. Suzi is on cloud nine. You would think that she was the one asked out for the first time. She has a daughter that has taken the first step towards being her own woman and she is reveling in it.

As for me I am thinking about everything. I am thinking about purity, college, purity, dating, purity, time together and did I say purity. I mean I don't want to come off like some psycho dad, but there is a very protective instinct that I have. At times I kind of feel like George Banks in Father of the Bride and at times I am very happy for the two of them.

So here is how I started the day....


At one point in the lunch I felt like calling this guy. I saw his ad and it seemed like good insurance.



Here is a video of how we ended.



Don't get me wrong I like the guy, in fact I've known him for a while......about as long as my daughter has known him in fact. Before this all started I would even humor my wife about him and Corrine getting together some day.But these days I think about calling Grampa J.

By the way I fully endorse these two seeing each other. I believe they have done it the right way........is that OK honey?

Christian Idol (amended)

In an era where we have "American Idol" we should have a show called "Christian Idol". This would be a show where willing contestants would have their idols pointed out to them by a group of loving believers around them. In today's church environment I believe that many people would sign their friends and family up for this, but would not sign themselves up.In our culture today we have made idols out of almost every conceivable thing. No need to look at Aaron and the Israelites and their golden calf to say "at least I'm not that bad". Well let's take a look at a few things and take the Idol Challenge.....

Television - Do you have a favorite TV show? What do you do if you are going to miss it? Do you own a DVR or some type of recording device that allows you to record your favorite shows? Now I'm not saying that if you have one show you watch and you have one of the afore mentioned recording devices you are an idolater. What I am challenging you to do though is to see how you react when you can't record that show and something else comes up. I know Christians that I call dear friends that will purposely not schedule things on days that their TV shows come on. I know others that just go into fits of anger because something has come up on their shows day. Now that's idolatry.

Movies - How many movies do you watch in a month? A week? a day? Are you driven by entertainment? Do you have to be entertained every waking moment? If so then you idolize entertainment. In today's society we really do make idols out of characters in movies, the actors that play them and epic movie series themselves. We can enjoy movies as believers, but we must not make them the end all be all. We must not get caught up in the fictitious worlds that is portrayed on the screen.

Cars - Do you value your car more than life? How do you react when your car is dented? How do you react when it is scratched? Do you look at cars and see what your next car will be? Do you look at the luxury cars and see it as a benefit of you wealth? Now there is nothing wrong with having a nice car for safety or for having a car that will bring you no worries when you drive it. As believers though we should be looking at the best way to use our money. How can we use our money to advance the Kingdom? Is it by owning a $60,000 plus car?

Home - Is your house bigger than what you need? Is it a status symbol for you? Do you live in one area town instead of another area of town because of the status it brings? How about the inside of your house, is it a museum or a house?

Academia - This is the one that can be an idol in my life. Here in the SCV where we have The Master's College, The Master's Seminary and Grace Community Church are we can be quite academic in our faith. We get more caught up in the memorization of scripture than the application of the scripture we memorize. We also get caught up in the academic labels of differing theological circles. So, ask yourself are you caught up in the academic aspect of Christianity or do you live your faith? Do you look for the outward appearances of your faith or do you truly serve your fellow believers?

There are so many others. One of the ones I am going to look at in my next blog is the idol of Family. This is something my pastor brought up a week ago and something I have thinking through this week.

For now remember this....Lev. 19:4 " 'Do not turn to idols or make for yourselves molten gods; I am the LORD your God."

We all have idols, what's yours? Take some time today and think about it.

Things I Have Been Working On

For the past few days I have trying to help a friend understand what exactly the "Post Modern" Church is. When I initially took on the task I thought it would be fairly easy since in the college group I lead we have been discussing "How to Minister to the Post Modern Church". When I looked at my notes I realized that we had really only focused on one aspect of the post modern church and that was the Emergent Church. The reason we focused on this aspect of the post moderns is because right now they seem to be the church of choice. They use the same Christian words that believers use, but they add their own meaning to them and that is what makes them especially dangerous.

Here is a taste of what I was writing to him:

Due to vagueness that surrounds Post Modernism belief systems that carry the labels of “Seeker Sensitive”, “Health Wealth and Prosperity Gospel”, ”Felt Needs”, “Open Theism” and “Emergent” all fit into this category. Brian McLaren was interview and asked about all the angst in the reviews of his book A Generous Orthodoxy and he stated there the “mantra” if you will, of the poet modern church which is “putting the fun back in fundamentalism.” In this interview MacLaren says this about God and Hell, “Does it make sense for a good being to create creatures who will experience infinite torture, infinite time, infinite—you know, never be numbed in their consciousness? I mean, how would you even create a universe where that sort of thing could happen? It just sounds—It really raises some questions about the goodness of God.”[1] To the Emergent pastors they feel like they are being historical and that they are being scriptural. They see themselves, as D.A. Carson aptly points out in his book Becoming Conversant With the Emerging Church, as the reformers of our era.

In the Post Modern Church all religions believe in the same god. Dr. Marcus Borg said this about his own faith and this encapsulates the Post Modern view “I am by confession a Christian of a nonliteralist and nonexclusivist kind (once Lutheran, now Episcopalian).”[2] Dr Borg in his book Reading the Bible Again for the First Time says this about the relationship between the enlightenment of Budhha and John’s talking about being born again “ Enlightenment as an archetypal religious metaphor belongs to a mystical way of being religious. Outside of the Jewish and Christian traditions, the best-known enlightenment experience is the Buddha’s mystical experience. Such an experience leads to seeing everything differently. It is not simply an intellectual or mental “seeing,” as when we say, “Oh, I see what you mean.” Rather, enlightenment as a religious experience involves communion or union with what is, an immediate “knowing” of the sacred that transforms one’s way of seeing. So it is in John: enlightenment is a central metaphor for salvation. To have one’s eyes opened, to be enlightened, is to move from the negative pole of John’s contrasting symbols to the positive pole. To move from darkness to light is also to move from death to life, from falsehood to truth, from life in the flesh to life in the Spirit, from life “below” to life “from above.”[3] Because of this blurring of religious lines we see candles in the post modern church as a way of seeking a peace about ourselves, we see mantra’s in the worship service as a part of “experiencing” God and we see Catholic Priests, Jewish Rabbi’s and Islamic Cleric’s being allowed to speak from their pulpits. I guess the best way to describe the Post Modern church is universalism. This quote from the book, An Emergent Manifeto of Hope pretty much sums up this feeling, “God’s table is welcoming all who seek, and if any religion is to win, may it be the one that produces people who are the most loving, the most humble, the most Christlike. Whatever the meaning of “salvation” and “judgement,” we Christians are going to be saved by grace, like everyone else, and judged by our works, like everyone else… For most critics of such open Christianity, the problem with inclusiveness is that it allows for truth to be found in other religions. To emerging Christians, that problem is sweet… Moreover, if non-Christians can know our God, then we want to benefit from their contribution to our faith. (195,196)”

So what do "true" believers do with all this information? This is the question we have been asking our college students. Our duty as believers is first to love them. To many time we as Bible believers want to "scripture" whip (like pistol whipping someone, but with your Bible)people to death. We will not be effective in winning them to Christ if we beat them over the head. Now for a point of clarification, I do not mean never introduce scripture. I mean introduce it with love and understanding. Remember you are a sinner too and God does not differentiate between one sin being worse than another. You are just an object of God's grace and mercy. Secondly live life with them. Be a Christ like example before them. Show them that you can be doctrinally sound and not be legalistic in your lifestyle.

I do like MacLaren's statement about putting the "fun" back into fundamentalist because I believe all to many times true believers lack joy. Believers be filled with joy and thankfulness and let the world know that you are a believer by the way you serve others and not by how much scripture you have memorized.

To Coexist or To Not Coexist.....

Lately I have been immersing myself into the goings on and beliefs of the Emergent Church as a part of the church in the Post Modern era. Last semester and this semester in the college group I lead we have been studying how to minister to the "Post Modern" mindset. The way I would sum up the church in the "Post Modern" era is that it lacks an absolute and singular truth. I guess if I were post modern and wanted to define my beliefs by a bumper sticker, I call this bumper sticker theology, the "Coexist" bumper sticker would do it. For you see the "C" in coexist is the Islamic Crescent and the "X" is the Jewish Star of David and the "T" is the Christian cross. Now as a fundamental Christian I do believe in loving all people, believers and non-believers and from a "Coexist" stand point I do believe we should love one another, but, and here is the big but, this doesn't mean that we have a singular religion with a common God and that we are all saved by grace.

My question to you is "why do we fear a singular absolute truth?" Have we come to a point i our society where fear of offending has overwritten right and wrong? I mean think about it without an absolute truth murder can be justified. If you think this is far fetched just think about what happens when we all start to believe that we all can have our own "truths". It starts with religion and freedom of speech, but where will this lack of an absolute truth end?

If you are a believer take a look at your standards of living, your core values and run them through the filter of scripture. Do they measure up? The challenge here is not to "dumb" down scripture to justify a sinful lifestyle or sinful belief.

If you are an unbeliever take a look at the problem that exists when we have no absolute truth. Some of you may even know this is true, because the one attribute to the human being, your conscience, tells you right from wrong. Can a conscience be swayed or warped? Yes! But it takes time and a numbing of the conscience to the real right and wrong. So a question to you, "why no absolute truth?"

So, do we Coexist or do we coexist with the intent of seeing each other in heaven for eternity? Christ died so that we could have eternal life and so that we could coexist together for eternity. This requires a belief in a singular absolute truth. Do you believe?

The Way We Roll

Today in Santa Clarita it was a frigid 50°. I know if you live in the mid-west or the east coast this may not seem very cold, but here where we wear shorts in February it's frigid. Both of my sons were out of the house so I was stuck……uh……I mean blessed by being with my daughter and my wife for the day. So in honor of this they both conspire……uh……I mean invite me to drive them to the beach today. Now I am already in long sleeves and am longing to be warm when they ask me this, so to say that I was not exactly thrilled with this idea would be an understatement.

If you look at the attached picture you will notice that it was great tanning weather at the beach. Now in my best Mr. Blackburn(fashion guru)voice I will tell you how the girls were dressed. Suzi had a wonderful beach ensemble. She was wearing a pair of jeans with a long sleeve shirt, a short sleeve shirt over that and a sweatshirt over that. She accessorized this wonderful ensemble with a pair of gloves and a scarf. I do believe she was wearing her wool underwear too. I think she did get some good color in her checks though……oh, wait a minute that red color is from being cold. Now Corrine that was another story. At least she wore her bathing suit, it was just how she accessorized that bathing suit. Now I am a father that believes in modesty, but this bordered on the ridiculous. She also wore a wonderful pair of jeans, but wore two……yes two sweatshirts. Since both of them wore tennis shoes and I believe wool socks, they actually complained when they got wet. Can you believe that? As for me I dressed weather appropriate with flip-flops. Come on this is Cali you have to wear flip-flops.

So needless to say we had a brisk, some what blustery day at the beach, but overall it was good. After all as Corrine so brilliantly pointed out no one was at the beach………imagine that. So if you are in Chicago where it is 5° just remember here in Cali the beach even when it is cold is the way we roll.

P.S. This is how my in-laws roll.....

Great Movie Quote

I don't know if it's comforting to know that not much has changed over time. By the way I'm a huge Bob hope fan and this quote made me an even bigger fan.